Something I want dearly to rescue, but cannot.
Serious answer time.

What I really would rescue, if I could, was the place I grew up in. It's not threatened by fire, but by developers and yuppies.

The place in question is a small community in the Adirondacks. Due to it being a national park overseen by the Adirondack Park Agency (APA) there is no industry up there. Consequently the main forms of income are a) tourism, b) various service industries such as grocery stores and restaurants, and c) being a developer. Given the price of land and the lack of places of employment up there, this means that the people buying and building there are rich, and only come there in the summer and winter for boating and skiing. This also means a profusion of mini mansions, a competition to build the ultimate Chateau de Fuque You.

Imagine growing up in the woods, with the deer and chipmunks as friends and the wind sighing through the trees as you played. Now imagine coming back as an adult and finding the woods gone, with pretentious monuments to ego standing where there were once majestic hemlocks and birch. Instead of silence at night and a road you could walk in the dark without encountering another person, there are now security lights everywhere, dogs that bay at you and drunken parties with very loud Classic Rock blaring through the remaining trees.

It's much like watching your house burn in very slow motion. Places that were dear to me are now gone forever, and I am powerless to stop it.

I have not spoken much about this to anyone, not even the Lunatic Artist, but it's been killing me. I dread going home, because every time I do there's another abomination on the landscape. Every time I walk the roads I hear the woods mourning, and don't see or hear the deer and chipmunks I once knew.

I've lived in Virginia for fifteen years now, and a part of me still longs for the Adirondacks- but I know that even were I able to go back there, it would utterly break my heart. So on the (hopefully) far-off day when I inherit my share of my parents' estate, I may retain one chunk of woodland for my kids, but will otherwise walk away from it and try to re-establish myself somewhere else.

I confess, as I write this my eyes are welling up a bit. I try very hard not to think about it, but when I do I feel sick and sad and scared. Every bit of magic in the world, every beautiful place, is destined to be ripped up by the yuppies and turned into another suburb, barren of spirit and life. I see it happening here in Virginia as well, up toward the area south of Washington DC, and see it crawling down through the area where the Lunatic Artist grew up- and it's killing her as well.

Compared to that, my furniture and other belongings are trivial.

EDIT: Ya want to know what really bothers me about the whole thing?

It isn't even the fact that houses are being built- it's that these are not houses per se, they're vacation spots where the yuppies come to see the funny animals and roar around on their snowmobiles and jet-skis. It's where they come to get drunk on the weekends and have all their buddies come and hang out and get ripped.

In other words, they don't really care about the land. It's just another status symbol to them, another bit of cock-waggling, another way of saying that they have more money than you do. It could be anywhere, really- but because the Adirondacks are expensive and have all this space into which they can belm and go farting around on their machines with their buddies, this is where they go.

And as they do so it becomes less and less of the place they bought into, and more of a suburban environment.

One thing that I was rather proud of, though- a McDonalds opened there a few years ago, and last year it went out of business. Put your special sauce on that one, bitch!
( The Resident Loon Not a demographic. Do not measure., Fri 9 May 2008, 14:03, 11 replies)

...
I've never been to the States at all, so can't say anything about the Adirondacks from experience - but the mere sound of the word makes me believe that I'd love the area...
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Fri 9 May 2008, 14:16, closed)

A few links to get you started.
Here is one, and here is another. More here, and here is the Wikipedia article on it.

And here is where I went to college.
( The Resident Loon Not a demographic. Do not measure., Fri 9 May 2008, 14:28, closed)

This is awful
a similar thing happened to the small village I grew up in. Yuppified beyond recognition, then developed, ending up as little more than a dormitory town. Even if I wanted to go home, I couldn't afford to.
(TheWeeWitch hasn't been here much recently .., Fri 9 May 2008, 14:35, closed)

The thing that sickens me the most
is that although it's against the law to do things like dredge out marshes so you can use a motorboat, they do it anyway at night- and if they get caught, they pay the fine and figure it in as a building cost, like nails or plywood.

I confess, if I were there and caught them cutting up the marshes in the night, I would shoot at them with a compound bow from the woods, with intent to kill.

Probably just as well I'm not there anymore.
( The Resident Loon Not a demographic. Do not measure., Fri 9 May 2008, 14:39, closed)

Yuppie hunting?
Sounds like a boatload of fun if you ask me... count me in! I've been up in the Catskills and Adirondacks and can vouch for their loveliness. And my hatred for yuppies. Why is there seemingly an endless drive to homogenise everything, to make it bland and unrecognisable, crushed beyond recogition? As Blur once said: "Modern life is rubbish".
( jim_bob can herd cats., Fri 9 May 2008, 14:46, closed)

It bugs the arse off me
that the first generation of yuppies who started moving to our village were so determined to have it all their way. They complained about the nearest farmer keeping sheep in fields beside their gentrified houses. Sheep? In the country? Who'd have thunk it, eh? They also complained about a rooster, but the local cop just laughed at them.
(TheWeeWitch hasn't been here much recently .., Fri 9 May 2008, 14:47, closed)

At this point
my thought is to try to buy some land in West Virginia, because there's nothing- and I do mean NOTHING- in West Virginia to attract yuppies. I think I can probably manage to buy a very large chunk of land there for an amount I can afford, and the taxes are minuscule- a ten-acre chunk I looked at a year ago had annual taxes of a little over $300. If I can afford the land, I'll build out there as cheaply as I can, doing as much of it as I can, and one day I shall utter a curse directed at the rest of the world and go in there and not come out.

Well, maybe not- but I like to think about it, anyway.
( The Resident Loon Not a demographic. Do not measure., Fri 9 May 2008, 15:00, closed)

Talking of ridiculous complaints
I grew up in a little farming community that happens to be on the main commuter route to Bristol.

The new wave of Sub-suburbanites moving out to the village are trying to get a local dairy farm closed due to the distressing sounds of cows being milked at 8am.

Idiots.
( chenobble rocking his explorer beard on, Fri 9 May 2008, 15:11, closed)

The Bells, The Bells
My mothers church is an old one. It's in the frigging Domesday Book. It's OLLLLD.

They've been ringing their bells quite happily for several hundred years.

Then someone moves into the extremely picturesque village..... and you guessed it.

Bells? On a Sunday? Interrupting my lie-in? I'll sue!
(osok Rebel without a clue, Fri 9 May 2008, 15:16, closed)

Wow
Just thinking about that reminds me of back home. One of my all time favourite spots in the world happens to be a 20 minute walk from my parents house where I grew up, out through farmland, to a river and the small bridge that crosses it.

I go there when I want peace and quiet, and to be alone, luckily you can't hear any signs of civilisation, and all you can see in the distance is rolling hills, trees and a few farm buildings.
You can hear wind through the trees, the gentle trickle of the river as it goes over a mini natural waterfall (all 6 inches of it), the birds and the sound of fish splashing beneath you.

If that ever changed, I suspect it would break my heart.
(buzzmong procrastinating since 1987, Fri 9 May 2008, 16:05, closed)

This reminds me of my grandfather's house in Missouri
I've lived in, let's see, 15 places in 31 years. The only place that has been in my life, for my entire life, is my grandfather's house, in central Missouri.
When I was little, it was way out in the country. But the city limit has crept closer, and closer, and closer. The only things in sight were the neighbors' tiny house, the barn, and the water tower. All gone now, replaced by McMansions. Even the pond across the road was filled in when I was about 12, although 10 years later some doctor dug a new pond next to the driveway of his new house, thus about 200 feet from where the old pond was. What's the point in all that? The single-track dirt road is now two lanes of concrete. There were woods and open fields, persimmons, gooseberries, blackberries, tarzan vines, and a creek that my cousins and I could play in (and our parents before us). All of this was on land that my family didn't own, but that nobody objected to our using for play and berry-gathering. Most of these things are physically gone now, and those that remain are in the process of being removed, surrounded by No Trespassing signs, or both.
Every time we would drive into town, my grandfather would point at the woods and fields along the way, "that's Mrs. So-and-so's land" and "Old Mr. Such-and-such owns that area". Now that it's all covered in subdivisions, my grandfather says on the way into town, "Boy, what would Mrs. So-and-so say if she were around to see this?".
It makes me wonder who mourns the fact that my own neighborhood hundreds of miles away exists.
(chase, Fri 9 May 2008, 16:58, closed)